Re: GNOME 2.8: Scripting

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>]

On Mon, 2004-03-29 at 12:42 +0100, jamie wrote:

> On Mon, 2004-03-29 at 11:22, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> > On Mon, 2004-03-29 at 11:59 +0200, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> > 
> > > Hi
> > > 
> > > One nice thing to have for GNOME 2.8 could be scripting of applications.
> > > For this, we need a standard and easy way for applications to register
> > > methods to be called from scripts and have those methods called.
> > > 
> > > So, I've been thinking this weekend (over some beers, so I apologize in
> > > advance if some things don't make sense :-) about this, and this is:
> > > 
> > > * add signals to GnomeProgram like "getMethodList" and "runMethod", so
> > > that apps can implement them and thus add support for scripting. I know
> > > some people want to not add new features to libgnome* so that they can
> > > be obsolete in a future. If so, I guess we could then have a
> > > FooScripting (or whatever) class that implements this. The question is,
> > > where?
> > > 
> > > * as for the internal implementation, the obvious choice, at least to
> > > me, seems to be BonoboApplication, which already has support for the 2
> > > methods mentioned above. If we were to use BonoboApplication, we could
> > > just avoid the step above, and so have applications that want to add
> > > scripting support use BonoboApplication directly.
> > > Other implementation choices are using d-bus.
> > > 
> > well, forgot to mention the other option people have talked about, which
> > is to use at-spi, although that does not work well, I guess, for
> > high-level methods. That is, if you want, in evolution to have a
> > sendEmail method to be called from scripts, how could at-spi allow that?
> > 
> > In any case, is there any chance we come to a standard scripting
> > mechanism?
> 
> For out of process scripting the ideal candidate is D-BUS.
>
>  I would like
> to know if there's any chance this will be available for inclusion in
> 2.8 (including desktop apps supporting this)?
> 
> I had thought about creating user friendly wrappers for the ati-spi
> interfaces but if D-BUS is gonna provide a nice clean desktop wide
> interface why bother farting around with Corba or some other method to
> get the same effect...
> 
well, the CORBA stuff is already done: BonoboApplication. We just need
to have applications use it.

cheers